


Prove Me Wrong

by homsantoft (tofsla)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-17 17:24:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9335069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofsla/pseuds/homsantoft
Summary: Yuuri has known for ages that Viktor is his soulmate, but is still pretty much the last one to know that Viktor is in love with him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iodhadh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iodhadh/gifts).



> In which soulmates are a thing and almost nothing changes, except for the fact that Viktor has even more topics to be melodramatic about. 
> 
> YW.
> 
> & Dear Jared, to whom I dedicate this sophisticated work of art: fuck you. ♥

Viktor Nikiforov's long hair is lifted from his neck, knotted delicately and pinned with gold thread; with glittering stones that seem to reflect the golden blades of his skates. He is both masculine and feminine, or perhaps neither. His head is bowed in concentration, and his breaths are deep and even, steady, steadying.

This is his debut, graduating from the junior division. Yuuri, with his hands wrapped around his knees, is watching it on the big old TV in the public lounge of Yu-topia, because then if his parents hear the quiet noise of it they should think that a guest is responsible. It's one in the morning, and tomorrow he will sleep through history and be kept behind after class.

A quarter of a world away, Viktor's coach lifts his jacket from his shoulders as Viktor stoops to remove the guards from his blades, away from his neck, the low dip of his costume revealing the fine line of his neck, the edges of his shoulderblades, a fine dip pulling the eye further down along his spine—

And Yuuri sees it.

Yuuri is _meant_ to see it. Yuuri, specifically, of everyone in the world, is meant to see it.

Some people hide the ghost-lines of their soulmarks beneath their clothes. Some people leave them be, neither hidden nor emphasised—they're quiet things, after all. A shift in the shade of the skin. A shift in the texture. Just another sort of birthmark.

Some people, mostly people from far-away places where things are done differently, trace the edges of them with black ink, tattoos or temporary lines.

Viktor has traced his in gold.

It runs down the length of his spine: the curving lines of a diagram, with a fluidity which says it was drawn by hand. It maps out a fragment of a programme, down through steps into a flip which lasts for at least three rotations before it vanishes beneath the edge of Viktor's outfit—

In fact, it lasts for four, but Yuuri only knows that because the lines on his own skin have fallen into a sudden new context. The final rotation of a jump that his skin never saw the beginning of, and the smooth stroke of a clean landing, the single turn of a loop—the same weight to the lines.

Like recognising handwriting.

It will be later that Yuuri really thinks that thought—an adult, far from home, remembering that first moment.

Now, on the TV, Viktor raises his head and steps out onto the ice, and Yuuri watches it so intently that he doesn't notice his mother in the doorway, checking on what's happening. Doesn't notice her leaving again quietly with a fond shake of her head.

His mother, though, will remember how avidly he watched the skating. Will weigh it carefully as part of the balance when Yuuri asks for custom skates and more intensive training.

Will let it sway her into re-balancing the precarious columns of her account books.

 

 

 

It's not Viktor Nikiforov himself, really, is it. Viktor is, is—a symbol. He represents the level Yuuri can reach for. The level that is within his grasp.

That level is the world.

It opens up in front of Yuuri: pristine ice and a breathless crowd.

I can, he tells his muscles, stretching them into ballet poses.

I can, he tells his muscles, repeating steps again and again.

I can, I can, I can—

It's a secret thought. A guilty thought. Don't get ideas above your station, Yuuri! But oh, he already has them, hungry and unstoppable.

I can—

 

 

 

"You're calling the dog Vicchan?" Yuuko is crouched down to look Vicchan in the face, laughing, ruffling his curly hair with both hands. Scratching easily at his ears so that he pants in delight. "Cute!"

"Mari thinks it's stupid," Yuuri says.

"Don't listen to her, Vicchan," Yuuko says. "Who's a pretty dog? You are!"

"Hah," Mari says. "He's alright. But it's a stupid name. Why a poodle, anyway?"

"Because _Vicchan_ ," Yuuko says happily.

"Hah," Mari says again, although it obviously still doesn't make sense to her. "Alright."

 

 

 

A soulmate can be so many things.

His mother's soulmate is his father, true, but she also has a second one, who is a woman in the city. They can debate recipes together for probably a hundred years if nobody interrupts them, and maybe other things that are only for them.

A soulmate isn't a romantic partner, dear, his parents told him when he was very young. Not always. It just means someone matters in a special way.

For some people, a soulmate is the possibility of home.

For some people, a soulmate is the possibility of being understood.

 

 

 

Yuuri's soulmate is a moving target. Posters on his bedroom wall as a reminder: Viktor's brilliant smile or the hot stillness of his face in a provocative shot. His gold blades. His gold-edged mark. Who else displays their mark like that—for a photoshoot?

Viktor is in Beijing. Viktor is in New York. Viktor poses with his poodle on a terrace in some mediterranean town, terracotta walls draped with flowers behind him, the victory v of his fingers washed out almost white under a bleaching sun.

Viktor is in St Petersburgh, training harder than anyone.

Viktor is giving interview after interview.

_Q: What do you think about the temporary tattoos [that your fan club have been wearing]?_

_Viktor: They're cute! It's so fun to see what people think the rest of the mark should look like. Isn't it nice to have a dream?_

_Q: You're not worried it'll stop you recognising your actual soulmate?_

_Viktor: Don't you think you'd recognise someone important anyway? It's sweet that they're saying I'm that important to them._

How does he have time? Yuuri won't understand that even later, even as he deals with the whirlwind that is Viktor getting out of bed at five in the morning. Viktor is possibly not a real human being, Yuuri thinks, in a way which is more aspiration than dismay, and he won't entirely revise that idea until the exact moment that Viktor starts to cry.

 

 

 

Yuuri stands on the ice in front of an indifferent crowd.

His legs tremble, adrenaline-clumsy. His stomach curls in on itself, a hedgehog of anxiety.

He's eaten so carefully. He's trained so hard.

I can, I can, I can—

Viktor Nikiforov stepped onto the ice, his head held high and gold traced along his back.

Katsuki Yuuri steps onto the ice with a hot secret thing pressed to the small of his back, well-hidden. An invisible hand to correct his posture. Now, raise your head—

Just like that.

 

 

 

"How does it feel to place so well in the junior division?"

"What do you think of your competitors?"

"People are calling you a rising star. What do you see yourself doing next season?"

Ah—

You see—

Thank you for your support—

 

 

 

_Q: So a lot of our readers are wondering—do you have a soulmate?_

_Yuuri: Oh—that's a kind of personal question!_

_Q: Sorry! But your fan club sent us so many letters!_

_Yuuri: That's not something I'm thinking about right now. I'm too young for it, you could say, or I guess really skating is—I mean—that's what's most important to me._

_Q: Skating is your partner?_

_Yuuri: That was weird of me, wasn't it? But I guess that's how I feel._

 

 

 

Vicchan is bouncy with delight when Yuuri returns south with Takeshi, case dragged behind him and skate bag slung over his shoulder, stumbling off the train into the cooling late autumn air. What's unexpected is that Vicchan is bouncy with delight at the train station rather than at the door of Yu-topia, and that he's heading up an entire welcome committee.

Yuuri is seen. Yuuri is seen. He's _seen._ It's a more intimate feeling, suddenly: the old lady from down the road and the girl who cleans the stands at the ice rink and Yuuko's father's workmates, people who are real, people who he knows.

An anxious elation.

His mind says: I knew I could do it!

His mind says: don't be stupid, you're just faking.

Yuuko's arms are tight around his neck, and Vicchan is so intent on getting close to them that when she drops her weight back onto her feet she almost steps on him.

Secret and warm at the base of his spine, still unrevealed to any of his friends, his soulmark sits warm and satisfied, and he has to remind himself again that it isn't Viktor, it isn't _really_ Viktor—though the idea is expansive and strange in his chest, though the posters on his wall aren't only reminders—it's just—

He was made to skate. And he's skating.

"I'm so proud of you," Yuuko says, hands on his shoulders. "Let's go eat! Oh, Vicchan, your lead—no, no, don't pull it tight, that's my _leg_ —oh."

And that makes Yuuri laugh. And everything is right.


	2. Chapter 2

I'm really doing this, Yuuri thinks. I'm really doing this. He thinks it as he packs his bags—thinks it as he books his tickets—as he gets his paperwork in order. He makes phone calls across the world, adjusting his mind gradually to Celestino Cialdini's english, inflected and accented in a way Yuuri has only ever heard on TV. Behind him are a host of letters to potential sponsors and letters of thanks for contributions given, Minako yelling at him when he protested that nobody would be interested and then taking a red pen to his clumsy attempts—in Beijing Celestino shakes his hand and says—

Yes.

I'm really doing this.

His English stumbles over his tongue, the slow words of an immigration officer fragmenting in his head—he's better at the language than this, much better, but the airport is full of the chatter of unknown voices and his mind is still crawling over the pacific, tangled in the sunrise above the clouds. Er, sorry, could you—do you mind—yes, yes, skating! Skating! Where—? The rink? No, um, oh—home! Right!

Question after question, although his visa is right there and required the answering of a very large number of questions in its own right. 

And finally—eventually—

He crosses the border.

 

 

 

The streets are very broad in the part of town where he's going to live, the trees that line them tall. Their leaves are new and pale, and the air has a chill to it that makes Yuuri very grateful for his jacket. His new apartment is quite large, compared to the ones he saw in Hiroshima when he was thinking about studying there properly. It looks out over a small park, so that he can see the birds flowing in chattering dark eddies between the tentative canopies of the trees.

There's a small bed and a closet. Enough space for a sofa. A square table, maybe, meant for one person. His belongings will seem very sparse in the apartment, even once they arrive. They would seem sparse in any apartment, probably. He doesn't have much.

He'll have to get a TV.

His footsteps echo. So does the jangle of his new mobile, startling, a shock that he feels in his exhausted state like a hand around his heart.

His mother.

"Oh, hi," he says. "Yes, yes—I made it! It's, ah—bigger than we thought. Yes, both. No, I haven't been yet. First thing tomorrow. Yes, I've eaten—"

For now, he leaves his case open on the floor. A pile of textbooks moved out of the way so that he can find some clothes are left in a pile beside it, bag of toiletries balanced on top of them.

He falls asleep without meaning to, never having made it as far as changing.

 

 

 

Yuuri often feels that there's a phantom hand against the base of his spine, guiding him. He never feels it more than when he skates. It's a silly idea, an idea from a tacky drama, the girl is led to the true path by the pull of her soulmark and finds—

Oh, right. It'd be love he was meant to find if it was like that.

It's always love, in dramas.

Triple toe loop. Clean landing. Height could be better.

His breath sighs, ghostly in the cool air.

Again.

Again.

"They weren't joking about your stamina," Celestino Gialdini says. "Good. We can work with that."

Yuuri stumbles, always so easily startled—

Celestino's expression says he's just realised that whoever he's talked to about Yuuri also wasn't joking about the nerves.

But here. He's in Detroit. He's facing his new coach. He's doing this. It's happening.

A hand on the base of his spine.

He raises his head. A deep breath. 

"Yes. Thank you for taking me on."

 

 

 

In Autumn, Yuuri sits with textbooks open on the bed. In Japanese—no American education for him, although several of his rinkmates are going that route. For Yuuri studies are balanced against his skating in a different way, intense in the off-season and slow distance learning through the winter. He sits cross-legged with a notebook on his lap, afternoon sunlight falling snow-bright across the page. Math exercises lie half-finished. On the pillow, his laptop screen flickers: European Championships, Christophe Giacometti's outfit definitely on the see-through side, in keeping with his growing reputation, skating today with more feeling than technical finesse—Yuuri winces to see him fall at a bad angle, a danger to the ligaments of the knee—sighs in relief when he picks himself back up quickly, and without signs of difficulty. 

Viktor Nikiforov has recently cut his hair—no more elaborate knots or flying ponytails. He seems oddly sober in his conversation with the Russian coach, and also very, very focused.

He is absolutely, completely breathtaking. He is transformed again, a new strictness to his outfits, a new tone to his performance. Yuuri's soulmate is an unpredictable person.

And what does that say about Yuuri?

Yuuri lays his pen carefully down in the fold of his notebook, giving up on the pretense of study for the moment—or shifting his studying focus, rather, to a different topic. Tomorrow, given a moment alone on the ice, he will test new steps, music in his headphones, secret and intimate, newly-sharpened blades hissing across the ice.

 

 

 

In truth, Yuuri is very predictable.

"You still don't know how to cook, do you," Mari says, smug. "Two years and you're just eating whatever you're told and sneaking off to find good restaurants when you're fed up. I know you."

"What about you, though?" Yuuri says, because there's no need to answer at all.

"Hah. Same old. I'm going to Tokyo next month with your friend Yuuko. We're going to see the skating. Official story. _She's_ going to see the skating. Don't tell mom."

More piercings? Going to see a concert? Someone she's interested in? He has no idea what her interest is on that point, if anything. What the shape of her life looks like in her head.

They move in their usual orbits. Mari's conversation pauses in the rhythm of a slowly smoked cigarette. Her lighter clicks and crackles down the line when she starts her second.

"Mari," Yuuri says. But he doesn't know how to finish the question his tone began.

Something about purpose, or soulmates, or whether she's feeling OK.

Silence. They breathe across the Pacific. 

Mari sighs. "Go train. Eat something good. I'll say hi to Mom for you."

"Yes," Yuuri says. "Thanks."

 

 

 

Detroit spreads its unknown bulk around him. It is a circumscribed world that he moves through: a triangle between the flat, the rink, the gym. At a bar in the quiet gym he moves through ballet poses, adjusting his posture, repeating. At the rink, he helps junior skaters with their training from time to time—it'll be good for you, Celestino said, and smacked him on the shoulder. You never want to leave the ice anyway.

Later, Yuuri will wonder if Celestino thought it would teach him how to play. But the thought won't occur until he's actually started learning, from other people altogether.

Now, he launches himself into the first competitions since his move. Passable results, for a newcomer. A few medals. Sometimes his head is too loud even on the ice, and sometimes it goes completely quiet. He searches for the difference, staring at the ceiling of a hotel bedroom in some country or other—in Canada or Japan or China. Often in Japan. Never in Hasetsu. He couldn't say why he lets it be. It's a fixed point he orbits, but in these years Hiroshima is his closest point of approach. Periods of classes that need to be in person. Meetings with administrators.

 

 

 

"Yes, yes, we're doing very well," his mother says. "Your skating is doing us good! We get such interesting visitors now."

"What?"

"Oh, yes—a lot of young girls, you know."

"No," Yuuri says. "I don't know."

"Mari is doing very well too! I think she likes Vicchan a lot more than she admits. She's settling down."

"That's good," Yuuri says, vague.

"You should come for New Year," she says, and in Sapporo Yuuri's breath sighs out in that familiar cloud, as though there weren't only ice on the ground but also ice in his body.

"I'll be in Canada then," he says, and as soon as he hangs up he wonders why he lied, the nonsense of it squeezing around his hands and his throat until he shakes.

 

 

 

Training. Again. Again. Again.

He'll be better. He has to be better.

Viktor is unstoppable, and Yuuri messes up his landings in competition again and again.

A soulmate is a chance, not a promise.

You can throw them away.

 

 

 

"You don't make friends with anyone," Chelsea says. She's bending to do her stretches, right leg extended before her, body curled forward. Her hair is a reddish blonde, and her ponytail hangs in an inquisitive curl over her shoulder. "Why not? We go out for dinner often enough. Join us."

She's nobody Yuuri is close to. He thinks that she pities him, and that's why she's so strange. Why she doesn't understand that he wants to be left to get on with his own business, turned in a different direction.

Yuuri takes a step back, as though that will do anything.

But behind him is the new kid. Phichit—right?

Yuuri isn't very good with names.

Phichit pats Yuuri on the shoulder—not a rough clap like Celestino, but a light, friendly gesture. Pat pat. He has to reach up to do it.

"Of course Yuuri will come to dinner. I'm very small and far from home and I require adult supervision."

"Uh," Yuuri says.

"Oh, good," Chelsea says, bright now that things are back on the course she expected. "Friday. Phichit knows the plans."

 

 

 

And the thing is, once he goes out, it isn't actually bad.

It's actually a relief, of some kind or other.

He realises, also, that he's missed dance—the kind he started with, on your own feet, following a different tempo.

So he dances.

"You're breaking hearts, you know," Phichit says. One of his ridiculous leaps of humour that Yuuri doesn't quite follow, not now.

"I don't—that's not it," Yuuri says.

"Did you go home with that man last week or not?"

"Um," Yuuri says. "I don't usually."

Phichit inspects an imaginary clipboard made of his palm, and checks off an invented box with a neat flick of the index finger of his other hand. "I'll put that down as yes. Did you ever call him after?"

"Um," Yuuri says.

Phichit nods solemnly, though his eyes crinkle at the corners. "You're really very bad at this. I'm not going to be your teacher. I'm young and innocent, and also it'd be a full time job, and I have to take over the world."

"I don't need teaching," Yuuri says. "I'm not _doing_ anything. I just like dancing." 

And blowjobs, sometimes.

Why is it so hard to mention the thing?

"Alright, Katsuki," Phichit says, laughing. "It's fine to have a sex life. I have a sex life. But if you make a mess of it, I want to hear the funny bits."

If he ever ends up with anything to make a mess out of, Yuuri thinks, he'll be too busy turning himself into a compact ball of embarrassment in a corner to tell anyone about any of it.

In this, at least, he will later find his image of himself to have been completely correct.

 

 

 

"I'm going to die from boredom," Mari says. "It's all your fangirls and old men. I'm serious, Yuuri. Your dog ate my pillow, too. Why didn't you get a passport for him and take him with you?"

"Mari," Yuuri says, "I've killed seven spider plants this year."

"Why did you even get a dog, then?"

Yuuri's argument sticks in his throat.

"This is about the actual Viktor somehow," Mari says. "Getting a dog like that one he has in the photo you left above your desk. Calling it Viktor. You'd think he was your soulmate or something."

"Uh," Yuuri says.

A beat.

" _Are you fucking serious,_ " Mari says. "What the _fuck_ , Yuuri."

"You can't tell anyone," Yuuri says quickly. "It's stupid, it doesn't matter."

"I don't believe you." Mari sighs. "I won't tell anyone. Does nobody else know? Seriously? Not even Yuuko?"

"Nobody," Yuuri says, and hopes it's true. "It's not like that! It's just about skating!"

Horror at even having said that much, swallowing him up even as he says the words. An admission of ambition. 

Shit.

But she doesn't react—just hums thoughtfully.

He knows that Mari has a soul mark on her wrist, but the mesh of it is complicated enough that without outlining he doesn't really know what it is.

Again he feels that empty space where he could ask her about soulmates.

It hangs open between them, the same way it always does.

"Alright," Mari says. The shuffling sound of her standing—she was probably sitting on the bench around the corner from the main entrance. "I have to clean the baths. Good luck with your thing."

Somewhere in the background, Vicchan barks.

 

 

 

The _thing_ is Skate America. He'll do—well—passably, again. Grit his teeth through the scores being announced, blank-faced in the kiss and cry.

Viktor will win the Grand Prix. 

Yuuri won't even qualify for another year.

 

 

 

"You did well, though," Phichit says. "Much better than me. This time."

They're huddled deep in their coats, stumbling down icy roads to a bar which won't shut Phichit out so long as he doesn't try to buy alcohol. A day at the Detroit Institute of the Arts. Look at the body language there, Phichit said, pointing at a piece with a man kneeling before a woman, hands raised to her. How her shoulder's pulled back. The foot. The start of something really haughty—maybe one for Nikiforov, right?

Yuuri laughs. Later he will laugh for a different reason, a little bit embarrassed and very pleased, realising that Viktor should have been the one kneeling, if it was going to be like that.

It has been Phichit's role to very gently bully Yuuri into exploring Detroit, exploring any other cities they visit together.

What kind of life would Yuuri be living right now, if Phichit was his soulmate instead of Viktor?

Silly question. He wouldn't have met Phichit if it wasn't for Viktor. And he knows what kind of life he would be living in Detroit if it wasn't for Phichit; he's lived it. So here they are: by happy chance alone.

Oddly, it's a nice feeling. He has been happy to be pulled along by the idea, the soulmate thing, Viktor caught under his ribs like a hook, dragging Yuuri after him.

But Phichit is Phichit. He just likes Yuuri. Because he does.

Later in the bar Yuuri kisses a girl, and then is vaguely embarrassed to have done it, the same way he always is, even if everyone is enjoying it a lot at the time. He always skirts around sex, trips into it or misses it and really, really tries not to think too hard about it and talks about it even less. Misses it, on this particular night. At the end of it, the girl gives him her number anyway, to Phichit's amusement—and if she's vaguely disappointed, later, that Yuuri only calls her to talk about music, Yuuri won't notice. He doesn't tend to notice things about other people.

Not until much, much later than any of this.

 

 

 

Celestino rejects the music she writes for him, anyway.

Yuuri bows, stomach turning: making the wrong choice, being caught in it.

Anxiety blooms. Leads to—the other things. The things it always leads to.

 

 

 

But his head goes quiet on the ice anyway, in those first competitions of the season.

 

 

 

_Q: So you've been taking the Japanese skating world by storm—a late bloomer, you could say. How does that feel?_

_Yuuri: I think—I've worked very hard, and it's starting to pay off. I still have plenty more to work on, but I'm aiming for the Grand Prix, so I hope you'll all keep supporting me!_

 

 

 

"You need to sound more like you care," Phichit says. "Honestly, Yuuri. So bland. And why aren't you on Twitter? Come on. Give your fans something!"

He's sitting on Yuuri's bed with his legs stretched out in front of him, back to the wall. Phone in hand, flipping through his feed on whichever site it is he's looking at now.

"Everyone keeps talking about my fans," Yuuri says. "I'm just here to skate. I'm not a very interesting person."

"Okay," Phichit says, and turns the phone towards him to show—

"Er," Yuuri says.

"You read it right," Phichit says. "You have fans! What did you expect. You'd have more if you'd talk about yourself."

"I don't need fans," Yuuri says. "I need to—"

"You need to what?" Easy curiosity.

"Nothing. Let's go down to the rink. It should be free now, right?"

"Yes, yes, alright. I'm going to beat you next season. Just warning you."

Yuuri shrugs, because the words that he wants to say feel too forbidden.

He imagines Viktor touching him. The small of his back. A nod of recognition. A sort of completion he imagines comes from meeting one's soulmate on an equal footing. A dream, a dream, a dream—

 

 

 

"Sorry mom called you first," Mari says. "She means well. Look, I know I talked crap, but I loved Vicchan. He was my little buddy, right? We used to talk shit about the old guys."

"Yeah;" Yuuri says. "Thanks. For looking after him."

"Yeah," Mari says, her tone an echo of Yuuri's. "Okay, Well. Mom's excited about your competition. Don't think she'll ever remember the name, though."

"That's fine," Yuuri says. There's a blankness to his own voice that feels like losing.

Mari is silent for so long that Yuuri wonders if there's a problem with the line—not one of her idle smoking silences, but something more complete.

"Look after yourself, baby brother," she says. "Vicchan did alright. He was a happy dog. It's fine."

"Mm," Yuuri says, his throat pressing in on itself too tightly for speech.

When Mari hangs up, he curls back in on himself again, and misses—misses—

Misses things that he couldn't look back at. Because he was chasing Viktor.

But he can only keep chasing Viktor.

What else even is there?

 

 

 

And here it is. Possibly it's not a good idea to have too clear an idea of how a thing will happen. Possibly it's not a good idea to invest too much into a single idea. Possibly he should have gone home, answered his phone more, eaten less, trained harder, focused his energy better— 

Seen Vicchan one more time.

 

 

 

This is what Yuuri learns from reaching the Grand Prix Final:

Viktor on the ice can't be touched after all.

He is close enough to taste, to smell—for a moment. In passing, stepping off the ice as Yuuri steps on. He is strict this year, his soulmark hidden under the elegant lines of a jacket that makes Yuuri think of a fairytale prince—

Yuuri's hands don't move, but they do tense horribly. 

Viktor's eyes don't even flicker in his direction.

Viktor is untouchable and Vicchan is dead and Yuuri's head is full of static—static—static—a band pressing in around it until his vision starts to stutter—

 

 

 

"A commemorative photo, maybe?" Viktor says. "Of course!"

And Yuuri might never remember how to breathe again.

He might never show his face in public again.

 

 

 

"No," Celestino says, "you _are_ going to go to the banquet. Show some gratitude."

So he does.

And that's that.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note change in number of chapters - life is life, so I split this one to keep the Sunday update schedule rather than make you wait & break it where I'd originally planned. Jazz hands!

This is how it goes:

Yuuri doesn't check his email, and he doesn't wash his dishes or his hair. He is a bundle in the bed when Phichit breaks into his apartment, and only makes a muffled noise of protest when Phichit pokes him in the head.

"You made it to the Grand Prix," Phichit says. "Come on, Yuuri. Most of us didn't even get that far."

Yuuri pulls the blanket further over his head.

"Do I have to throw you in the shower and drag you to practice?"

"It's not that," Yuuri says, though it is kind of that.

"Alright," Phichit says. "What is it?"

"Viktor," Yuuri says, and wishes he hadn't; feels the name stick like a fishbone in his throat, sharp and choking.

"Viktor. Nikiforov? Did you do something stupid?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Come on, get up. Seriously, Yuuri. Up."

And that's how Phichit learns that Yuuri has a soulmate.

 

 

 

This is how it goes:

Yuuri loses.

And loses.

And loses.

 

 

 

"You're so obsessed," Phichit says. "That's okay. But don't mess yourself up so badly."

He's looking at Yuuri with an expression that's unfamiliar, sober in a way that doesn't really suit him. Later Yuuri will wonder if there was a question in there that he didn't really understand, something about—connections, significance. Now, Yuuri is as obsessed as Phichit is saying. What else is there except a missed chance?

This is how it is: Yuuri has already messed himself up more than enough, but he has no idea how to stop. 

 

 

 

But sooner or later, you have to stand up again anyway. Dust yourself off. Reorient. 

So he watches Viktor skate, and considers.

So he finds himself in Hasetsu.

So he relaxes into the familiarity of Yuuko hugging him, one of her big enthusiastic gestures, slightly crushing, and he only realises then that he barely thought about the fact that he did miss her—only feels that he's been worse without her when she's right there.

So he breathes as steadily as he can, and steps onto the ice, and skates.

His head is quiet.

"Yuuri—" Yuuko says, a little bit hushed.

He could tell her. In that exact second, he could tell her. Why Viktor, why that routine. He never could, before. He never showed anyone. He's never said the words, in order: Viktor Nikiforov is my—

But the rest of Yuuko's family comes tumbling in, and the words slide from Yuuri's tongue unspoken, lost in the middle of the noisy life of them all.

 

 

 

And of course, soon after that everything changes again.

This is the thing: it's completely possible to miss your chance with your soulmate.

It's also completely possible to walk into one's family home and find your soulmate naked in the baths, apparently.

Viktor is bowed forward when Yuuri stumbles through the door and out into the unseasonal snow. Yuuri's breath clouds in the air like the steam from the hot springs. That steam clings to Viktor, to the man Yuuri is wildly and perhaps irrationally convinced is Viktor, but the glint of gold through the steam is arresting—

Only one sort of tattoo goes uncovered in the baths.

The conviction tips from irrational to concrete, the tumbler of a lock shifting in Yuuri's chest, sticking, clicking—a physical feeling that resembles a sound.

Here's a cliché turned into fact: 

He can't seem to move. He is stuck, watching, desperate to watch and desperate to look away—from the slide of water across Viktor's skin and the way it snakes along the edges of his soulmark instead of flowing across it.

Viktor turns, and stretches out his hand—

Relief and loss as his soulmark disappears from sight, replaced by the ordinary fact of nudity.

 

 

 

That night, Yuuri's fingers tremble against his lips. He curls in on himself under his duvet, not to hide but to hold a feeling to himself, something shivering and strange. It spreads from the lines low on his back, skitters across his skin, sinks through his fingers into his bones.

It is happiness as a bodily experience, his mind buzzing beyond thought. It is happiness so close to anxiety that the two touch.

How does it feel to be close to your soulmate? Really close? Does it feel like anything in particular? Is it something that resonates through the hollow spaces inside you like a hammer striking a bell? Is it—?

Yuuri has read stories, because Phichit is right: he's obsessed. Yuuri has read that it feels like stepping into a field of flowers or like every weight has lifted from your body or that birdsong literally, actually fills the air. _Romantic bullshit,_ as Mari puts it, even if some of the books were hers.

Later he will describe it as a feeling of sudden space. The world unfolding around him. He'll murmur those words into Viktor's neck with no space between their bodies and Viktor's hands clutching helplessly at his back, and Viktor's breath will shiver, a gasp and a whine—

It will be a kind of a story, but an honest one. A best-guess approximation of something there are no words for.

 

 

 

 _Is it true that Viktor is in Hasetsu? Is he really your coach?_ Phichit, far away. His emails are full of emoji, little shocked faces and exclamation marks, and that makes Yuuri smile. Happy anxiety and uneasy pleasure live together in him now, the world made unreal. Viktor's intensity, his peculiarity. But the fact that Phichit knows—that he can piece together more of the puzzle—feels strange.

Unanswered messages, piling up in his inbox.

A flood of messages of a different sort directed at his empty Twitter account. Accusations and frantic questions, a wall of them, pressing in.

Yuuri turns off all his notifications, and puts on his headphones, and runs. Makkachin bounds at his heels: another strangeness, Vicchan's origin still here even after Vicchan is gone, still lively and demanding and curious.

 

 

 

"Absolutely not," Viktor says. "Not like that. You have to believe it, or the audience won't either. That's useless. Start over." 

That he can give the harshest criticism with a broad smile is what confuses Yuuri most. He is unreadable. He is—kind of terrifying, honestly.

But this is why he's Yuuri's soulmate, after all: not an indirect force to push Yuuri onward, but a person who stands there and corrects Yuuri's posture. A hand on the front of Yuuri's shoulder and a hand on the small of his back—

This second one shakes Yuuri, tenses his body reflexively under Viktor's hands as his mind spirals down into some new dark place. And what does Viktor think about that?

Sometimes, sometimes—he feels as though Viktor knows. As though Viktor also feels something when they're close, particular and intimate. As though Viktor knows exactly where his soulmark sits.

He does, of course. Yuuri can't know it then—can't know how Viktor balances, just like Yuuri, between emotional extremes, understanding nothing. 

"Relax," Viktor says. "That's no good either. Come on."

His hand falls away, and Yuuri almost gasps, the way cold water shocks sounds from the lungs without the brain having anything to do with it—

Presses his teeth down on the sound before it can escape.

A strange frozen moment. Viktor is looking at him, isn't he—Yuuri can't see it, head ducked down so that he doesn't see much except his feet and the ice, but there's stillness of Viktor behind him. The staticky awareness of his attention.

Viktor sighs.

Yuuri feels it: warm air against the back of his neck.

"I don't understand you at all," Viktor says. His voice is uninflected.

When Yuuri turns, face flushing, Viktor is smiling again.

But he definitely sighed.

 

 

 

And there's Yuri Plisetsky, too. No stability for Yuuri to settle into, only lurch after lurch, turning his stomach with fear or elation.

Just retire already—

He doesn't know what to do with it, with another person crashing into his life. With the intensity of Yurio's anger towards him, teeth-grinding and snarling and sharp-clawed. 

He doesn't know what to do with the new knowledge that Viktor is the type of man who apparently makes promises flippantly. Impulsively, easily distracted from them again. He could just as well leave. Just as well decide to prioritise Yurio. 

The familiarity between the two of them exists behind a wall of silence: Yuuri on one side, looking on. Viktor's easy laughter on the other.

Yurio and Viktor are soulmates too, he thinks, completely incorrectly but with what seems in this moment to be startling clarity.

Oh.

I could lose him again.

But we've barely started.

 

 

 

Mari is humming to herself as she sweeps up petals from the garden paths. Yuuri, on his way back from his morning run, stops dead at the sound—completely baffled by it. It's one of the songs she usually plays in her bedroom late at night, the sound leaking out from her cheap headphones, by that band with a member who looks kind of like Yurio.

"Oh," she says, looking up. "Hi. Usually takes you longer than that, doesn't it?"

"Not any more." Yuuri grabs at his jacket where it's trying to slide out from under his arm.

She laughs at that, the laugh that means she finds something actually funny.

"Good day?" Yuuri asks.

Mari shrugs, like she's indifferent. "Lively."

It's so boring I'm going to die, Yuuri, she said once. I'm not joking. If I have to stay here another year— 

They were teenagers then, and she's been here since.

He didn't think about that either, really. Not much.

Somehow things don't look quite how they used to. The same streets and the same people, a little bit more worn, but Viktor stands in the middle of it and—it's something else.

He will realise, one day, that's it's probably because he isn't looking into the distance for once.

Now, it's still only an indistinct feeling of difference.

"Makkachin keeps bothering people, doesn't he?" he asks.

"Yeah," Mari says. Grins. Grins! "It's good for them."

Oh, that's right—

Vicchan was her friend.

 

 

 

Practice.

Here's a thought, stabbing sharply through Yuuri's chest, loud in the silence that Yuuri finds himself enclosed in, again, at the rink:

I want Viktor to look at me. 

Just me.

He is an inherently undesirable person—that's what he thinks. This whole competition Viktor has conjured from thin air, this sex appeal thing, it's all ridiculous—

And he still wants it.

 

 

 

Phichit, always, checking in. _Why do I have to find out everything from instagram or whatever?? Not even YOUR instagram. Come on, you could take some great photos. The great Viktor Nikiforov is an undignified human like the rest of us! It'd be great. Please. ...he IS human, right?_

Yuuri studies his phone for a long time, and thinks about Phichit. Poking him in the head and telling him to get up. Messing about with him on the ice, just for fun.

His fingers stay hovering just over the screen.

A heartbeat.

A heartbeat.

A heartbeat.

 _I don't know,_ he writes. 

Send.

_Well, let me know if you find out! Remember, I'm going to beat you this season, so make sure you're on good form so I look amazing for doing it._

Okay.

Okay.

Once he's breathed through this wave of anxiety, he finds something has loosened in his chest. You can throw away chances with friends, too, can't you—

But there Phichit is.

There Yuuko is.

And the rest of them.

 

 

 

Nothing is certain.

"He's nuts," Yurio says, bundled in a towel, shivering from the waterfall Viktor more or less chucked them under in a fit of—Viktor-ness. A silent moment in which a process Yuuri can't in that moment begin to fathom takes place. "Hey, if you need help with anything—"

"You'd help me?"

"Like fuck I would," Yurio says, and it's still a snarl, but it's not very emphatic, almost all of his reflexive irritation turned for the moment towards Viktor. "You going back to the rink or not?"

 

 

 

Another breathless anxious space, the deciding moment close at hand: 

Viktor's costumes, laid out in Viktor's room.

Among them, that first costume—the one that showed him. Lay out the road to this strange world he moves through for him. The dip of the back makes him think of a woman in a traditional painting, the daring slip of the fabric down away from the neck, exposed.

The thought of wearing it—of showing so much, but still perfectly concealing the most essential thing—holding that one secret at the base of his spine—shakes him. So many feelings at once. So many bodily sensations to get under control. 

Yuuri's hands curl reflexively in the fine fabric of it, and it's a hasty act of will to relax them again, the fear of damaging it sickening. The fear of being seen to be that invested in it secondary, but present.

The way his breath shudders and his face heats when he's pushed to extreme emotion is something that he's learning to live with around Viktor. But pulling the costume on, alone in his own bedroom, is something else. The slide of it across his skin comes with a shock of intimacy. 

Viktor _wore_ this.

Skin to skin.

Stop it. Stop it. It's not—

A soulmate isn't a romantic partner. His soulmate isn't a romantic partner.

He feels hot—not his face, but his whole body. Something deep and aching.

Of course Viktor wants to see. He has to check five times that his soulmark really is hidden before he lets Viktor into the room; has to take a moment, too, to settle himself back into his body, to stumble back from the edge of that strange intimacy.

"Yes," Viktor says, and he's very slightly pink-cheeked, isn't he? Isn't he—? 

Swallows. 

Possibly he doesn't speak because he has to find a tactful way to say Yuuri looks ridiculous, Yuuri thinks, but he feels something else.

Viktor reaches out a hand. Fingers gentle on Yuuri's chin. Really skin to skin, another shock beyond the imagined intimacy. They brush a downward stroke along his neck. Come to rest against Yuuri's chest, over the heart.

"Turn," Viktor says, and taps Yuuri's side, and Yuuri obeys, and he knows what will happen, he knows, he knows—

But he gasps aloud, really gasps, when Viktor's hands touch his bare back, smoothing along the edge of the fabric.

Viktor's forehead presses against Yuuri's back, right between the shoulderblades, where the first lines of Viktor's own soulmark sweep—

"Yes," Viktor says again. "This one."

Unreality.

All Yuuri can hear is his own pulse.

 

 

 

A soulmate is not—

Needn't be—

It can mean—

"I want you to stay," Yuuri says.

And steps out onto the ice.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm coming to terms with the fact that while the structure of my outline is holding, I have a lot more to say about some of the points than I thought. So here we are, upping the chapter count again to make space for all the dramatics. The fic that was eternally a couple of chapters from being done. Always winter but never Christmas.

Viktor stays.

A strangeness to him, this unimaginable presence in Yuuri's life—someone almost divine, a comet pulling him along in its glittering tail. The most mundane things turn into a source of fear. Let's go out for dinner, Yuuri! Let's get drinks! Let's bathe together!

Bathing is a problem, but one Yuuri is well used to, secretive as he's been about the soulmate thing for most of his life. Angling his body just so when he goes to climb down into the water, folding his towel just so around his waist, a bit too high up—those things are just normal. Slipping out of Viktor's hands when they reach for him, try to pull him out of the water, is harder—

Viktor's expression flickers, a little shift of the corners of his mouth. One breath, only. Enough for Yuuri to imagine another expression in its place, Viktor lifting him up and looking him over and _seeing_ him.

What are you scared of, Yuuri? He asks himself. Come on—this is what you wanted, isn't it? To connect with him—?

Really he never believed in it. He couldn't have fantasised any of this. Not the material facts.

Not how it would feel.

Viktor sighs. Then he grins. The usual one. Playful. "You're still so tense. I thought the baths were meant to be relaxing."

The more ludicrous—let's sleep together! There's enough space in my bed!

A hand on the small of his back in practice, again and again. Never on bare skin again, not after that night.

Don't make fun of me, Viktor, please—as though you know—

Yuuri thinks, _thinks_ , that perhaps the feelings tumbling in his body aren't only because he knows, because he's been chasing Viktor. Maybe there actually is something about being close to your soulmate, and that's why Viktor—

Viktor leaned his forehead against Yuuri's back and, although Yuuri had decided the costume himself, daring through terror, Viktor was moved to say something about it. Teasing Yuuri. Touching him. 

And even if it was some kind of game, it still felt so intimate.

 

 

 

He shivers with it, just from the memory. Bundles himself up in his blankets until Makkachin whines about being left out.

"I'm just being a bad person," Yuuri says to Makkachin. Guilt is a loop of wire around the heart, like the pieces Viktor pinned his long hair with years ago. Viktor is trying to do—something. He wants Yuuri to be something to the world. Yuuri _took him_ from the world.

And he won't go and eat dinner with Viktor.

Nice, Yuuri. Good work.

 

 

 

"Let's go to the beach," Viktor says.

Yuuri relaxes his fingers one at a time where they're clutching the edge of the blanket.

"Okay."

 

 

 

And it's easier, isn't it, to speak by the sea—alone in a way which feels far more convincing than any training session or conversation in one of their bedrooms. It's easier to speak when Viktor speaks first.

Yuuri has never thought of the gulls, until Viktor names them. Although he left—settled himself in a city with lakes but no sea, no tides—although everything was strange—the gulls never made him think of home.

Yuuri's soulmate was a moving target, and he made himself into a thing that could chase it and let everything else go, he thought—

Only realised when he came home that there were smells and tastes and sights peculiar to Hasetsu alone that ached in him.

"I didn't think I missed it here," he says. Leans himself forward, draws his knees up to his chin. The tide is falling, leaving a strip of dark sand behind where Makkachin's footprints grow clear and clean-edged. "I thought it was just a place to leave. I had to keep moving, so I kept moving."

Viktor hums thoughtfully. His head is tipped back so that he can watch the gulls circling, his pale hair fluttering around his face.

"I had to get stronger," Yuuri says. "I thought if I stopped moving I—"

Would lose you.

He sighs, letting the words slip out that way instead of voicing them, only ghost-movements of his mouth, like he's just considering his words.

"I thought if I stayed still, people would see properly how weak I am."

Stories from Detroit. He falters, gathers courage, falters again.

"You're not weak," Viktor says, when Yuuri finally falls silent with embarrassment, and Yuuri looks sharply across at him, looking for slyness to his expression, laughter in his eyes or on his lips. But there's something very focused about him instead, so decided that Yuuri has to glance away again.

And he's barely collected himself before Viktor asks:

"What do you want me to be to you?"

Yuuri's mouth is dry and suddenly sour, that gluey feeling, like if you try to part your lips they'll fight back.

Not a father figure.

Not a friend.

Not a brother . . .

"What, then?" Viktor asks. Looks across at Yuuri with an easy smirk. "Are we going to play at being soulmates? Destined lovers? I'll try it out. It'd be such a good drama—"

A lilting inflection. _soul_ mates. 

Yuuri's heart is in difficulty, his lungs clenching against it, ribs tightening achingly around all of it, he can't, he can't—

Viktor turns towards him, and his smile is sly now, the way Yuuri had expected it to be when he talked about Yuuri's strength.

Yuuri scrambles— 

"No—no—don't play at anything! Just be yourself!"

Viktor settles back. A little frown. A very, very small sigh.

"Ah, well," he says.

Touches his fingers to his lips.

I could have kissed him, Yuuri thinks. Right then. He would have thought it was some kind of game—like asking to sleep together—

He'd probably have been happy I was learning to play his games, right?

But romance doesn't go with the whole business of having a soulmate. Not for Yuuri. Not for most people, probably. Viktor is trying to fit himself into Yuuri's life, not realising that he's already in the middle of it. If he knew, maybe he wouldn't be like this. Could satisfy himself with the way they connect on the ice, knowing that Yuuri wasn't going to demand anything else from him—that this is what they're soulmates for.

The idea of even saying that seems bizarre and selfish. Viktor is a champion, he's given up everything for Yuuri—Yuuri is winning from this connection between them—he just doesn't see what there is for Viktor here—what he could possibly have to give.

And Viktor takes his hand anyway, and pulls him to his feet—wraps strong arms around him in a sudden, unexpected hug, while Makkachin bounces around their feet.

"What—" Yuuri says, and Viktor shakes with laughter against him.

Brushes Yuuri's hair from his forehead as they part.

And that's—that's pretty confusing.

But Yuuri opened up to him, and the world didn't end.

 

 

 

He practices. Opening up.

Phichit's voice down the phoneline is the same kind of relief as walking into his family's house was. Unlooked for, but undeniable.

Alright. Alright. Good.

 

 

 

Choreography.

"How about this?" Viktor says. Step, step, step, and the sweep into a quad—toeloop.

Almost— 

"Yes, I can do that," Yuuri says, and tests the motions.

 

 

 

It's Minako, not Viktor, who throws the paperwork for the coming season at Yuuri—more or less literally throws, so that Yuuri scrambles to catch it, though she's grinning when he looks up at her.

"So much for giving up and being sad," she says. "Okay, work with all that. I'll come and write all over it tomorrow and then you can do it right."

"I can do my own paperwork now," Yuuri says, but diffidently. "I'm not seventeen."

"Sure," Minako says. "Then I won't need my red pen. I'm going to get drinks with Viktor. He knows how to have fun as well as work hard."

That's right. Viktor has shown up to morning practice looking completely ruffled a few times, his eyes circled darkly from too much drinking and too little sleep. Yuuri has done enough of that himself, but it feels weird to even think about it here in Hasetsu, and he finds he doesn't actually miss it. He drank too much at the Grand Prix last year, and since then—well, he's not sworn off or anything, but it didn't feel that great.

"Okay," Yuuri says. "Have fun."

"That's it?"

He looks up at her. "Er. What else should it be?"

"Never mind, then," Minako says. "Paperwork! Tonight!"

 

 

 

So many times, then, with Viktor's arms closing around him. Another shuddering thing, like Viktor's hand pressed unknowing over his soulmark. A thing that Yuuri should get used to, but never does—only learns to push down the shiver of it, to hide it, to let his body relax into the moments as though they were normal.

His fingers, slick with balm, against Yuuri's lips at that first competition—

He'd let his mouth fall open a little on reflex, and Viktor's fingers had lingered just _slightly_ in surprise—

 

 

 

Thinking about it at night, he curls in on himself with embarrassment again, as he's done so often since Viktor arrived. His face is pressed into his pillow. No Makkachin, his affections returned to Viktor for the day. Light filtering in through the window casts long shadows and spills silver in thin stripes across the walls, and Yuuri is alone with the phantom press of Viktor's fingers against his lips. Later, he'll look back and realise that Viktor was probably curled in on himself in the same way in another room, trying to make sense of the same moment—

But that's later.

 

 

 

Yuuko still swings her feet when she sits on railings. Her hands still curl on the metal in the same way, although a ring glints on her finger, catching the light as she shifts her weight. Autumn is cooling the air, and the leaves in the park are losing their vibrancy—not changing colour, but getting ready to.

"Huh," she says, smiling broadly. "Really, Yuuri? You'd do anything except talk about soulmates before. Did something happen?"

"Not really," Yuuri says, because what's happening to him right now is more or less the same thing that's always been happening to him, made intense and confusing by its immediacy. Following someone who moves too fast for him is nothing new. 

Even if he isn't used to that person turning around and offering him their hand.

"Hmmm," Yuuko says. "I think something _did._ "

Yuuri shrugs.

"I don't have one." Yuuko kicks both feet forward and drops her weight onto them, standing with a single bouncing movement that ends with a wince. "Oh, I felt that. Old age."

Laughter at the corners of her eyes. She'll get lines there in a few more years, probably before she's thirty. It'll suit her. This isn't something that Yuuri will realise later: for once he sees something clearly, in the moment. 

"You don't?"

"Nope!"

"Oh."

"Not much use for whatever you were going to ask next, right? Try Mari. I mean, Takeshi has one, but we never figured out who. Maybe it was some kind of outside chance for him, right? Or maybe we'll work it out one day. It's not like it matters that much."

"Er," Yuuri says. "Do you mean Mari _does_ know who her soulmate is?"

Yuuko gives him a long look. "Okay, we're not talking about Mari. Definitely not if you won't tell me what's going on! But not at all, really."

Sudden memory: Mari went to Tokyo with Yuuko sometimes, or to Kyoto, or wherever it was Yuuko had a reason to go. Didn't she?

Maybe not concerts after all. But nothing about Mari said _I'm happy knowing who the most significant person in my life is_. 

Supposedly most significant. Maybe.

"Why do you think you don't have a soulmate?" Yuuri asks.

"I think I just like everyone too much," Yuuko says serenely, and then laughs at whatever Yuuri's face did in response. "Oh, come on. I like deciding for myself. I don't know about the metaphysics of whatever, but maybe that's just what's best for me, right? People don't like it if you talk about it like that. _Oh, Yuuko, aren't you sad your marriage isn't a proper one!_ But it's nice! I don't have to obsess over it—"

"Yeah."

"Hmmm," Yuuko says again. 

"I," Yuuri says. Feels his face heating, his heart tripping over itself. Opening up. Opening up. Remember. It's been working out. "It's."

"Yes?"

"Viktor," Yuuri blurts, because enough people know by now that it feels sort of weird that Yuuko doesn't. Weird enough to break through his terror. "It's Viktor."

He's never seen Yuuko quite so wide-eyed before. She seems completely speechless.

"Yes," Yuuri says. "I know."

"But that's good—isn't it? That's what you wanted?"

"Yes."

"Come on," Yuuko says. "Don't get that face. Let's go do something fun."

"You're always trying to cheer me up," Yuuri says, thinking of talking to Viktor by the sea. But if the surprise at how clearly he sees the pattern comes through in his voice she doesn't react to it.

 

 

 

Yuuko is right, of course.

It's good.

It's what he wanted.

Viktor, close enough to touch, with his face turned towards Yuuri. Whatever that's going to mean.

 

 

 

So here it is.

Here it is:

Yuuri's hands tremble, the unsteadiness in them made clear by the sign he holds, waiting for other people to speak. He hardly hears them: anxiety blurs sound into the roar of leaves in a gale. Colours become a wall—

Yes, there, they want him to speak—

"My theme for the season," he says, "is love."

He speaks. More than he meant to. A tumble of words. Courage finds him in the oddest moments—it's found him now.

A love that can't be defined. The love for a friend or a family member or—

A soulmate.

Viktor is the first person I've ever wanted to hold on to.

 

 

 

This is what Yuuri will never know:

Viktor, watching the press conference in a room full of Yuuri's friends and family, is almost beyond controlling himself in his confusion.

Viktor, trained to smile for the camera, only saves himself by being flippant.

 

 

 

"We're going shopping," Viktor says. "Don't argue. That tie was painful. What's a good place to go shopping?"

This to Minako, who seems to be the only person he considers a reputable source. 

"Your credit card or his?"

"Mine, mine."

She laughs. "Thought so."

"I don't need you to buy me clothes," Yuuri says.

"Apparently you do," Viktor says, in his most saccharine voice.

He's been using that voice a lot since the press conference. That old smile, too. Distant even when he's being charming. 

When did Yuuri learn the difference?

 

 

 

Fukuoka again. Late evening now, with the city lights glittering through the train windows, high buildings outlined against a deep blue sky.

Viktor doesn't look at Yuuri. His attention is turned out past the window, elbow resting on the back of the seat, chin resting on hand. His face is turned warm in moments by the lights outside, but he can't be touched just now. His stillness completely shuts out the possibility. He smiled and pushed and threw clothes at Yuuri for him to try on and he was never really there for any of it. It really is like the first days, with Viktor's smiling half-veiled insults, his cool contemplation from behind that public mask of his.

Bags sit piled on the seat beside Yuuri. Too expensive, too much—from this Viktor most of all.

The train carriage is empty, the bulk of the day visitors already home, the people drinking barely getting started. There's just Viktor being untouchable and weird, and the rhythmic clunk of the train wheels, and the lights.

The entire width of the carriage between them.

"Viktor," Yuuri says, tentative.

"Hmm?"

"You're angry with me."

Purple and blue light from an installation by the water, and then sudden darkness as the train sweeps on past a closed park. Viktor doesn't turn his head.

"Am I?"

The weight of Viktor's moods is always powerful. This one is oppressive, like air that's too humid and too unmoving. It itches against Yuuri's skin. It tries to choke him. It makes his head feel heavy and weird, too much pressure on his skull, a headache building.

"Yes."

Light falling through the windows again.

Viktor's head bows forward, hair falling across his eyes, strikingly bright now. His hand falls away from his chin, curls on the back of the seat.

"I just don't understand you," he says. "Who are you, Yuuri? What was that press conference?"

"I said too much," Yuuri says. "I got nervous."

Viktor's laugh is soft. A tumbling little breath. "You didn't sound nervous."

"Oh," Yuuri says, uselessly. "I was. I forgot half of what I meant to say."

"You made it sound like I'm your soulmate," Viktor says. Light. If Yuuri could see him clearly, he'd be smiling that frustrating smile again, wouldn't he? "People are going to _talk_. Even more than usual, I mean. At least we're not going to bore them. That's good."

"I don't want them to talk about it."

"But your theme is _love,_ " Viktor says.

"Don't make fun of me."

Viktor is silent.

"What?"

"Like I say, I don't understand you. Just when I think I know who you are—"

"I'm your soulmate," Yuuri says, all in a rush, because the words have been tumbling inside him, bruising his chest, heavy as stones. "That's—that's who I am."

Viktor turns towards Yuuri, face shifting into clarity in the carriage's strip-lights, visible but still unreadable. "Oh," he says, without a shift in tone. "Is that all?"

Everything lurches—

The train pulling into a station, breaks whining.

A group of women climb into the train.

Viktor turns his face back to the window.

"That's what you are," Viktor says, as though Yuuri hasn't just thrown something shocking and secret at him. "I asked who."

"Ah," Yuuri says. He feels dizzy, disoriented. He can't begin to imagine—what does Viktor even—

And even if he could answer the question, even if he had the slightest idea, it's too late now, with a group of women discussing dog breeds loudly five seats away. No space for anything openly confessional left.

He sinks down into his seat, and very nearly misses the moment when Viktor's face softens, the mask slipping—

"Sorry," Yuuri mumbles. Vague words are alright, aren't they? "I sort of told everyone, and I never talked to you about it."

"Alright," Viktor says. A heavy sigh this time. "Oh, look, come here. You look too sad. I can't take it."

"You're making fun of me again," Yuuri says.

"No," Viktor says. "Come on, Yuuri. I'm offering you a hug."

No _sorry for being passive-aggressive for days instead of talking about my feelings._ No _what do you even want soulmate to mean._

"You're so bad at this."

"Oh," Viktor says.

A struggle with the bags, an unsteady stumble across the carriage.

It's warm, leaning against Viktor's side.

Yuuri lets himself sink into it, even though he doesn't understand much of what's happening. Doesn't understand, now, that the contact between them in that moment is as much for Viktor as it is for him.

That Viktor is fumbling through confusion as much as he is.


	5. Chapter 5

Yuuri's bags are packed, and Viktor's are in an explosive state which he swears is _almost done_. The energy in Yuuri is relentless, a turbine hum that keeps him on edge, and so he's on the ice.

His hands are shaking. A muscle jumps in his neck—tick, tick, tick—his pulse in his ears—

If he can just skate for long enough, if he can just train hard enough—

"Enough, Yuuri," Viktor says, in his brisk voice, the _I know best_ voice. Not the cold playful voice—that one faded back to an occasional presence after Yuuri's confession. But Viktor's coach voice. He's really not very good at it.

The scissor-blade slide of his skates towards Yuuri slices through the hum of Yuuri's body.

Viktor's hand presses flat-palmed to his chest.

"Don't ruin yourself."

Yuuri stares down at Viktor's hand and breathes. This is one of the things he's learnt, an anchor against anxiety: pick an object. Learn it. Make it your entire focus.

There's nothing but Viktor's hand. He's torn the nail of the little finger, and there's a very small scar on the second knuckle of the index finger, not a cut-mark but a little scrape, white and smooth. The lines of his bones are clear on the back of his hand, thin and delicate—his entire hand is delicate, the fingers very slim and quite long. Piano hands.

Fabric keeps their skin from touching. But warmth still seeps through.

Yuuri breathes. 

Today, it's enough. Maybe when he's under the stress that comes from big competitions it won't be.

"Hey," Viktor says, and his other hand is on Yuuri's chin, there, how smooth his hands are too—not worker's hands—and Yuuri's face is tilted up, fingers underneath it, the pressure gentle.

Viktor's thumb brushes Yuuri's lips for a moment and then falls away.

Yuuri is caught.

"Ah, there you are."

"Sorry."

"Hmm," Viktor says. "No. I don't think I want sorry. I want you to stop, and then I want you to show me something fun."

"You just want to spend money," Yuuri says, as though they're having a completely normal conversation and not staring into each other's eyes.

"Of course I do," Viktor says, and then his eyes crinkle with laughter, and Yuuri is released—snapped roughly back into his own body to find himself rearranged.

 

 

 

Say it again: a soulmate can be anything. They're a turning point of some kind, or a chance.

That conversation was never finished. Who are you, Yuuri? Not what, but—who. They left that silence there between them.

But now Viktor takes him by the wrist, those fine fingers pushed under the hem of Yuuri's sleeve. Now Viktor pulls him through the touristy part of town, nowhere they haven't been a dozen times before. Now Viktor puzzles over terrible gifts for people—no, no, I think I can get Chris something more annoying than that—hmm.

They are about to move past the limits of their confined life, and outside of Hasetsu, Viktor has friends—has fans—has professional contacts. Rivals. He has a world that Yuuri never quite properly grew into, because Yuuri messed up his chance a year ago.

It has to be jealousy that expands in his stomach, but he isn't sure who he's jealous of, exactly.

Look at me, Viktor, he thinks. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me.

And Viktor glances back over his shoulder, eyes laughing, and tugs Yuuri closer to examine—something or other. It doesn't matter what. It matters that Viktor leans close to him—that their hands brush—that he feels Viktor's breath. The soulmate-intimacy of it. To be so tangled around another person, even without being able to set any more specific words to what they are.

Skating ties them. Probably last season should have been the end of Yuuri's career, and this will inevitably be his last, but he's found his chance, and he wants, so badly—

 

 

 

He lets the wish sweep him along. Onto the plane, with Viktor's head against his shoulder and the cool processed air of the cabin making him glad for that warmth. Here it is: the past is done.

He turns towards the future. Beijing. Russia. Barcelona. Closes his eyes and tries to settle into the feeling as the plane chases the afternoon sun. 

 

 

 

Here are some things that Yuuri learns in Beijing:

 

 

 

Viktor's alcohol tolerance is high but not limitless—relatedly, Phichit still finds the world as funny as he ever did—and Viktor, draped over Yuuri as they stumble back towards the hotel, really is a lot heavier than he seems. Something surprisingly solid—of course he'd be solid—even if Yuuri can't quite understand him as a person, as someone real, he's not as ethereal as Yuuri used to imagine him. That intense physicality, the look on his face when he's testing choreography, the sweat on his neck after training. 

Viktor can, after all, be touched.

Viktor, drunk, really _wants_ to be touched. Presses close against Yuuri so that they're side to side, Yuuri's arm around Viktor's back and Viktor's across Yuuri's shoulder. Leans his head in towards Yuuri's.

"I should throw you in the shower when we get back," Yuuri mumbles, and Viktor laughs, breathless.

"I'd shower with you, Yuuri."

"You _have_ showered with me." Yuuri keeps his gaze straight ahead, focuses on the street and not on the rest of it, the crowds going out to dinner or coming home from it, the cars, the dizzy lights.

"Only at the beach," Viktor says. The sluice of cold water making them gasp in relief after the heat of the day. Viktor's hands on Yuuri's head, ducking him into the stream of it. Water splashed back and forth.

"The baths too."

"Mm," Viktor agrees. "It's nice now that you're not trying to hide your soulmark from me. I thought you just hated me."

"Don't be ridiculous:"

"I'm always ridiculous. Charming. _Ridiculously_ charming."

Yuuri has in fact read that article. One of Viktor's stranger interviews. Apparently Viktor found it memorable too. The photos accompanying it were taken in—a bowling alley, wasn't it?

He closes his eyes and counts to ten and fights down the tremors that are beginning in his body like foreshocks to the larger earthquake of anxiety. "Viktor, please just let me get you back to the hotel. People are staring."

Viktor sighs and falls silent, and leans his weight slightly more heavily onto Yuuri. They make it into the hotel lobby, into the lift. Breathe, Yuuri. Breathe. Viktor is the one who got too drunk, not you.

"You should get your mark outlined," Viktor says, as Yuuri closes the door behind them—Viktor's room, the key dragged from Viktor's jacket pocket. "Gold to match gold, right?"

"Um. I don't know about that. I'm not as flashy as you."

"You could be." Laughter in Viktor's voice, so that Yuuri turns to look at him—at his strange smile, his soft eyes—the pink spread across his cheeks very obvious against his pale skin.

Viktor raises his hand, slides it into Yuuri's hair—curls his fingers against the back of Yuuri's head.

Yuuri's mind stutters, the world moving like a lagging film, skipping frames—blink, and Viktor has leaned closer—

Viktor's lips are very smooth. Yuuri has just enough time before everything else catches up to think—oh, and mine are so chapped again—

He stumbles back, hand to his mouth, heart beats punching against the inside of his ribs, violent and wild. "You don't mean that."

"Ah," Viktor says. Tilts his head back against the wall, sinks slowly down until he's sitting, knees bent up in front of him. His mouth curls into a smirk. "Okay."

"You should shower," Yuuri says. "Drink lots of water."

"Yes, coach," Viktor says. His eyes are glittering slits.

"Goodnight, Viktor."

"Yes."

Stumbling steps out, into his own room, next door but safely separate—a bed to curl up on and a pillow to pull over his head. He can't know that Viktor is still sitting against the wall, hand to his own mouth. If he knew, he wouldn't reach the correct conclusion anyway.

 

 

 

He cares far less than he thought he would that everyone is looking at Viktor, because Viktor is always glancing to _him._ Looks across from his conversation with Chris, his lips quirking slightly at the sight of Yuuri. Turns from the women Yuuri doesn't really know, skaters but not people from his circle of acquaintances, with only a lazy lift of his hand—turns towards Yuuri. Again. Again. Again.

 

 

 

And as for the kiss—does Viktor remember?

Does it matter?

He's only looking at Yuuri. Even drunk, even in jest, he's only looking at Yuuri.

And the world can't have him. He has to be so good, so good, that Viktor can never look away again—

And he surpasses himself.

 

 

 

He learns, too, that his nerves aren't any more stable than they used to be. That the applause of the audience still presses in on him, a crushing ocean weight, a strange pressure in his ears. 

And he learns that Viktor doesn't have a single clue what he's doing.

"Well, if you can't even make the podium with your _soulmate_ as your coach then I should just take responsibility and leave," he says, and he's doing that cool thing, the icy expression, the one that's a performance. That mocking note to _soulmate_ again. Yuuri knows it, knows it, knows it, knows it—but his body is already shaking—

"Should I just kiss you or something?" Viktor snaps. 

Yuuri's eyes burn—the noise that comes from his throat feels alien to him— drunk, Viktor wanted to kiss him—sober, he throws the idea of a kiss around like a bitter joke—

But there's something very frozen in Viktor's expression. A deer frozen on the road. His lips are slightly parted, his cheeks a little bit pink. Wide-eyed.

"Of course not," Yuuri says, because Viktor kissing him as a joke or a game one more time would be more than he could take. Yes, they're soulmates because of skating, but Yuuri is falling, falling, falling.

But that expression of Viktor's—

 

 

 

That's what calms him, isn't it? Stupid Viktor, who doesn't know everything after all. His panicked face when Yuuri began to cry, his own words catching up with him.

No static in Yuuri's head. Music, and the ice, and quiet thoughts. He's skating well. Ah, an error there—not a clean routine—but it's working. It's working.

Soon it'll be the step sequence. It's the one that's drawn down Viktor's spine, nearly—very small adjustments—he thought it was another ridiculous game of Viktor's, _as if you could really be that important to me._ But Viktor knows now.

What if he were to change it back—make the last quad a flip—?

What would Viktor think then—?

Imagine his face. _You should get your mark outlined._ Well, what if he did? Literally—figuratively?

Yuuri lets the steps flow through him. The satisfaction that comes from the neat sequence, blades perfectly aligned. The sweep of the setup. 

Jumps.

 

 

 

And there's this:

Viktor's mouth is warm and his lips are still so soft. His hand is in Yuuri's hair again, and they're falling, falling—Yuuri's breath gasps out into Viktor's mouth—

Viktor doesn't let Yuuri's head hit the ice.

Oh, Yuuri thinks, looking up into Viktor's soft happy face. Oh. Oh no. Cold at his back and warmth against his chest and Viktor, looking down into his eyes.

He's happy. Yuuri is _happy._ Not a happiness that feels like anxiety, although it should. Overwhelming, yes—swallowing everything, leaving him with Viktor and nothing else, nothing at all—his world narrowed and focused—

The second kiss lasts longer, Yuuri reaching up for Viktor, hand to his cheek.

Yuuri sinks.

 

 

 

"So the soulmate thing is working out for you," Phichit says. Phichit, crowned in gold—however much Yuuri wants to win, there's still something right about that.

Phichit has fought as hard as Yuuri has. Harder. A boy from nowhere, he says. Oh, he's proud to be a Thai skater, but he knows what he's working with. He was never meant to be much—not in skating or life—that's what he sometimes said.

Yuuri thinks that Phichit would always have been something, but Yuuri has no idea what that particular kind of struggle is like—that sometimes you just don't get a lucky break to work with—that the difference between feeling nobody cares if you succeed is different to the reality.

But here Phichit is, grinning, lying on his back on a bench and staring up through a skylight. His medal is still looped around his neck. It gleams.

"Ah—I guess so. That was so embarrassing."

Viktor kissing him again when his scores were announced, his hand curled loosely around the edge of Yuuri's sweater to coax him forward, and Yuuri's heart had surged—the cameras on them, everyone seeing—

Viktor tugging him away to kiss him once more in a dead-end corridor, arms around him, expression fervent. He touched Yuuri's face, studied it. There. Now keep winning.

Patting Yuuri's clothes down until he looked orderly. Turning away with a smile.

"It was sweet," Phichit says. "I wish I'd been there to film it. I was being interviewed, I only saw it on TV. My poor instagram is so sad."

"Why is my life like this," Yuuri says.

Phichit just laughs. "It's the one you wanted."

"Working together. Not kissing in public."

"How about in private?"

"Ah—don't be like that—"

"Sorry, sorry. Here, come on, let's take a selfie. Medalists!"

"What about Chris?"

"Later. Come _on_."

Yuuri leans in. It's a comfortable little routine, really—an old one—Phichit always was good at this kind of thing. And enthusiastic. 

Click, click, click.

"There!" Phichit says. "Anyway, maybe now you have your true love or whatever you can think about something else for once, right? Or do you want me to beat you again at the Grand Prix Final? I'm going to."

"Thanks, Phichit," Yuuuri says.

"For what?"

A shrug. Everything, really. But it feels too weird to say. Like something is ending.

 

 

 

But where do you go from here?

Kissing someone means—well—it means a lot of things, from the small to the world-shaking. But it doesn't mean you know if you're going to do it again. Or if you should.

They don't, that night, although Viktor leans his weight in towards Yuuri when they sit down for dinner—although Viktor's hand lingers on Yuuri's when they say goodnight.

It's no good, is it—when Yuuri's time as a skater is finite, when Viktor is Yuuri's for as long as he wins—how can he just—

Viktor sleeps against Yuuri again on the plane home, and Yuuri puts his arm carefully around Viktor's shoulders, and doesn't doze off at all, too aware of the slow shift of Viktor's body with every breath.

 

 

 

_Q: There was already speculation based on your choice of outfit for your short programme, but can you confirm now that Viktor Nikiforov is your soulmate?_

_Yuuri: I think I'd prefer to treat that as something private right now._

_Q: Despite the fact that Viktor has been very demonstrative?_

_Yuuri: I'm not denying it, but I don't want the interview to be about it._

_Q: Alright. We'll let your fans keep speculating. Let's talk about your next competition. How does it feel to be competing in the Rostelecom Cup?_

 

 

 

"Mari," Yuuri says. "About your soulmate—"

Mari laughs, short and bitten off. "Yuuko told me she messed up. But I guess it's not any more embarrassing than Viktor trailing after you with that _expression_. He's so hot, Yuuri. How did you even get him to like you?"

That's what Yuuri wants to know.

"But about you—"

"Yeah." Mari shrugs one shoulder. "I know who my soulmate is. She went to the university I missed out on getting into. We met up a bunch of times. But I have to be here, and she has to be there. No clue what we were meant to do for each other."

"There might still be something, right? Later?"

"Sure. Or it might have been something that never happened. She's nice. I like her. We went to some shows together, that kind of stuff. I could have fun with her. Not exactly world-shaking, though."

It will be. Time will take an unexpected turn in its labyrinth, and _she has to be there_ will turn into _she has to be here_ , and Yu-Topia will make it through another generation after all, despite the fact that Yuuri with all his careful planning has been spun onto a new course.

But that will be later.

"You're talkative lately," Yuuri says.

"That's what happens when you have to keep up with VIktor Nikiforov," Mari says. Grins. "Hey, baby brother, I'm fine now."

 

 

 

Viktor worms his way into Yuuri's bed while Yuuri is at his desk, checking his email. Stares at the walls, now oddly bare. Turns over to look out the window. Stretches, so that his robe slips a little closer to indecently open.

Meagre bookshelves. A few CDs. None of them have titles Viktor can even read, his conversational Japanese passable now but his grasp of kanji nonexistent.

Makkachin turns happy circles beside the bed.

"I still don't know who you are," Viktor says. "How are you such a mystery? Do I have to be a detective? Ah, that would be such a pulpy book. I'd read it."

"I don't know what you want," Yuuri says. "I'm nobody special. That book is fairytales. Those ones are math textbooks. That's a children's book about a troll from when I was eight. It scared me. I don't know why it's still there."

Viktor sighs.

"You're definitely someone," he says. Turns his head towards Yuuri. "Do you want to know why I showed my soulmark that first season in the senior division?"

Yes.

Yuuri shrugs.

"I thought it would be shocking," Viktor says. "I was right, wasn't I? Surprise is everything. You're very surprising."

"And that's why you kissed me, too."

"Hmm."

Finger to his lips. So many different ways to use that gesture, to vary it, to convey nuances of meaning. Right now it seems reflexive, coupled with a sudden unfocusing of Viktor's eyes.

"That's why I kissed you the _first_ time. No, no, not the first. The first time sober."

"Oh. You do remember that. I thought so."

"I meant it," Viktor says, very quietly, and Yuuri feels so breathless, dizzy—feels he'll fall into Viktor and never get up again—

Makkachin bumps happily into his legs.

The world rights itself.

"Why?"

"Maybe you should put the pieces together yourself," Viktor says. "I would have thought it was obvious."

But Yuuri has never had a talent for emotional reasoning.

Viktor stays there, that night: stretches himself out on his side against the wall, and Makkachin struggles up onto the bed on Yuuri's other side, and the bed is definitely much too small for three. But there they are.


	6. Chapter 6

Russia is as bitterly cold as Yuuri remembers, the snow coming down in heavy drifts. The wind in Moscow is damp despite the cold, biting at every exposed bit of skin. He wraps himself in Viktor—the idea of him, the closeness of him. He heats as Viktor smiles at him—Viktor, close and intense and turned towards him, tucking his scarf around Yuuri’s neck with a smile. Fingers to Yuuri’s lips, a quick touch, there and gone, and Yuuri, brave for a moment, pulls them back and kisses them. Gets to see Viktor falter, eyes widening.

Imagine staying here forever.

Imagine pulling Viktor in and holding him close, skin to skin. Wrapping a hand around his cock and watching him come apart.

They haven’t—done that. Yuuri, unused to thinking about sex even when he’s had it, stumbles over the idea. And there’s something dangerous to it. Falling deeper into something he can’t keep.

“You’re thinking something serious,” Viktor says. Still smiling.

“I want,” Yuuri says. Stumbles here too. “I’ll win.”

“Of course you will,” Viktor says. Shifts his hand to lay it against Yuuri’s cheek. “That’s my Yuuri.”

They walk—bags left in the hotel, towards some place that Viktor knows—coffee and probably some kind of sweets that Yuuri shouldn't be eating right before a competition. Viktor is such a terrible coach. 

That's a warm thought too.

"Yurio looked so angry about taking silver in Canada," Viktor says. "Hmm. I wonder what face he'll make if he loses to you?"

"Is he alright?" Yuuri asks. Yurio really did look—maybe not angry. Frustrated.

"Who knows," Viktor says mildly. "He'll do well. You made him realise he has to try properly sometimes. Maybe it was good for him."

"I don't understand," Yuuri says. "But okay."

Viktor laughs. "Hey, come on. Let's not stand around in the cold, huh?"

Yuuri understands pressure, in a way. Yurio is terrified of something, like Yuuri is terrified of falling short and losing Viktor too soon. He's fierce, though, where Yuuri trembles. What does that feel like?

 

 

 

And here’s Yurio, for the first time since he was in Hasetsu. He stares Yuuri down again and again, bristling like a housecat—oh, Yuuri can imagine him snarling at that though. A tiger!

Yuuri has been very frightened of Yurio—genuinely, intensely. It was worst at last year’s Grand Prix—the spiralling panic at Yurio’s disdain, so intense that his vision began to darken around the edges—so intense that he couldn’t move until Yurio was long gone. And then—that Yurio could have taken Viktor from him—

It’s gone.

He watches himself feel a little intimidated, with Yurio slouching in the hotel elevator, hands deep in his pockets. He watches himself hesitate over how to address him. But it’s only an ordinary kind of anxiety.

“I don’t want to fucking talk to you,” Yurio says, and Yuuri thinks—that’s kind of funny. Isn’t it kind of funny? Here Yurio is, shoving his way into the elevator—

"I don't even want to look at you," Yurio says, and Yuuri actually—smiles. A little.

"Good luck," Yuuri says. "To both of us."

Yurio makes a bitten off sort of growl.

 

 

 

This is their pattern, then. Yurio snarls, but follows. Yurio can't stand him and can't stand Viktor, but keeps turning to them, lip curling in disgust.

Here's the thing: Yurio is very, very young.

Yuuri knew that—didn't he? He knew that. But the awareness of it slipped and slid in the fixation on performance, of analysing the threat he could pose. He feels it now—seeing Yurio amongst their peers, seeing his fangirls yelling and how he bristles at that too—how he looks around in the crowd for someone he can't find.

In truth, the signs were always there. It's Yuuri who's learning to look beyond himself.

His delight when Yurio takes to the ice with sweeping force mirrors in Viktor.

But there's this, too: Yurio is young and he's being pushed and pushed to win, and he skates beautifully and hard and collapses at the end of it, testing the limits of his body. Will he do as well as Viktor thinks—? Not now, but later. How will his body hold up?

There's a genuine concern there. Yurio has years of skating ahead of him. 

Viktor can coach him, maybe. When he and Yuuri are done, when Yuuri leaves the ice. Could Viktor get him to see something else, something that hurts less—the way he did for Yuuri—?

But it's difficult, even now, to hold the thought. Not only because it's painful, but because it feels unreal.

Yuuri is still chasing gold.

 

 

 

How _would_ it have been, if Viktor had still been there for the free skate?

What would it be like to feel something other than exhaustion, realising he'd made it to the final by the narrowest of margins?

If Viktor had been here, then it wouldn't—

But that's like wondering what would have happened if Vicchan had been fine last year.

He made it.

He made it.

He made it.

 

 

 

Tension in Yurio's shoulders on the podium.

His face turned away from Yakov and the completely terrifying woman who used to be—a ballerina? Minako would be able to tell him. Hair falling loose from his braids, spilling across his face as he gets his praise or his lecture or whatever it is, quick Russian words, the woman's face completely inscrutable.

Yuuri still only has words of Russian, the ones that Viktor drops irritably into the spaces where his English and his fragmentary Japanese both fail him, the ones that fall out in excitement. Following a conversation is impossible.

Yurio brushes them off so quickly—sweeps away—the look Yakov and the woman exchange is laden with meaning, but the meaning of this silent communication is also obscure to Yuuri. It feels like a look between people who've known each other a very long time—a look that outlines some complete conversation. His mother gets looks like that sometimes, passes them back and forth with her most important people.

What's that like?

He doesn't know that he's already started to share those kinds of looks with Viktor. 

 

 

 

I don't want to see you, I don't want to talk to you.

"You made me look for you, asshole," Yurio says, on the street, in the snow. More or less throws a present at him, and it's—another piece of a puzzle, a corner, a fragment of sky.

 

 

 

But Yuuri is already running, in his mind, back to Viktor—leaves the puzzle of Yurio unfinished, pieces scattered. He's restless on the plane—too uncomfortable to sleep, every piece of music on his phone the wrong one, the food tasteless. It's a directionless anxiety, too diffuse to pin onto anything specific, for all that there are plenty of specific things it _could_ be about. It just curls at the base of his skull, humming to itself, drowning out his thoughts.

And then there's Fukuoka— 

And Makkachin— 

And Viktor. Viktor, disheveled in a way Yuuri has never seen—not when Viktor was hungover or panicking, not when he was throwing his things hastily into a bag to go back to Hasetsu a few days before. There are dark circles under his eyes, the creases on either side of his nose made clearer. His hair is unstyled.

His arms around Yuuri are uncomfortably tight, and Yuuri's must be uncomfortably tight around him in turn.

Every word he has for Yuuri shakes Yuuri, does something to his soul—ah, of course it would—soulmates—and their time is so limited, the time when Yuuri and Viktor can be a unit, united in purpose—of course it burns in him, of course it's overwhelmingly intense.

Viktor says: It's like a marriage proposal, isn't it?

Viktor says: I wish you'd never retire.

It twists in Yuuri, tears, his nerves pulled too tight—his body will come apart in Viktor's hands. I wish, I wish.

Viktor, I wish—

 

 

 

Viktor's kisses are frantic. He holds Yuuri's face between his fine hands, fingers digging into Yuuri's scalp—pulls him close—deep long kisses that Yuuri moans into, and Viktor's breath whines against his lips, and then another kiss, Yuuri drawing the sounds Viktor makes willingly down into his lungs. Viktor's room, the door pulled closed—Makkachin sleeping in a sunny spot downstairs.

"Don't leave," Viktor says. "Don't leave, Yuuri."

"I'm not going anywhere," Yuuri says. "Here—"

They've shared kisses, now and then—turned their faces towards one another and hesitated, watched one another's mouths and looked for the _moment_ , the time when it would be just the right thing. Measured kisses.

They overflow now. Viktor's restless hands on his neck, his shoulders. Falling to his waist as though kissing is going to shift into something else—Yuuri wouldn't mind at all, is terribly aroused—despite all this tangle of feeling—because of it—

But Viktor's hand only slides back until it covers Yuuri's soulmark—stays there, fingers pushed under the hem of Yuuri's shirt—and Yuuri reaches to press his hand to Viktor's back—and they stay tangled up but fully clothed until they're called down for dinner. Wash their faces sheepishly—an oddly teenage sort of experience—although he never made out with anyone here, in his family's home.

They share Viktor's bed this time, later. Yuuri's head on Viktor's arm, Yuuri's hand on Viktor's stomach.

Yuuri thinks his brain will race at full anxious speed, so close to Viktor—so full of how much he wants Viktor and how selfish that want is—thinks he might cry, silently—he's good at that. But the smell of Viktor, of his shampoo and his warm skin, is too much like safety.

So he sleeps anyway—wakes to the usual VIktor, the collected one, inspecting his hair carefully in the mirror—a little twist of distaste to his mouth as he arranges it, but a theatrical one, although he's theoretically unobserved. And there's Makkachin's determined weight pinning Yuuri's legs to the bed. Mari beating out mats in the yard, the sound heavy and distinctive. 

Viktor is shirtless, and the line of gold down his spine is shocking—again, always.

"You're going to have to start waking up earlier than this," Viktor says. "If you're going to win that gold."

His eyes meet Yuuri's in the mirror.

That playful little smile that always means trouble.

"Whose fault is that," Yuuri mumbles—touches his fingers to his lips—absent-minded, only realising the weight of the gesture after it's already done—

Sees that Viktor blushes, the dash of colour clear against his pale skin.

"Practice!" Viktor says, and, turning, still smiling that no-good smile, whisks the blankets straight off the bed. Makkachin barks in alarm—tumbles—staggers to his feet, shaking himself off so that his ears flap wildly around his head.

 

 

 

Yuuri is twenty-four years old, and about to retire.

It's Phichit's text that wakes him up, with row on row of happy emoticons and confetti. Yuuri, who is about to retire, smiles to read it.

He takes a run—before Viktor is even awake, although Makkachin flops off the bed after Yuuri, slinks through the door as Yuuri slides it shut.

As long as Makkachin follows behind Yuuri, Yuuri can imagine that the footsteps are Vicchan. That it's six years ago, and that he's creeping out of bed on the morning of his birthday to skate, Detroit like a dream in front of him and Viktor something still more distant and unknown—that he isn't twenty-four years old—that he isn't about to retire.

He and Makkachin don't go to the rink, though, but down to the sea. They sit where Yuuri and Viktor sat and talked about who Viktor was meant to be to Yuuri. Makkachin doesn't run back and forth across the sand—he just sits there next to Yuuri, in the spot where Viktor sat. Then, grumbling, he fidgets himself sideways until he can lean himself against Yuuri, snuffling at Yuuri's neck and ear.

Yuuri pats his fur, curls his fingers in it. Turns his face out towards the sea, and listens to the gulls wheeling above. Wingbeats and sharp cries, the sound that makes Viktor think of home.

"I love him," Yuuri says, testing the words, that exact combination, unsoftened, no modifiers to cushion them.

"I'm in love with him," Yuuri says, testing himself a little further.

The words sting.

Like a wedding proposal! Oh, Viktor. As though Yuuri retiring was something far away. As though it meant a lifetime together. And maybe he even meant it—maybe he even means it—that they should always be together—

But if he means it, he doesn't understand it. Viktor breaks promises—has to break promises, probably—to stay in motion. Inertia wouldn't suit him. Yuuri, sinking into the roll of business-owner in Hasetsu, the details of Yu-Topia taking up the hours when he wasn't teaching children to skate, wouldn't suit him.

"Why is he so impossible," Yuuri says, and bends himself forward, forehead to knees, to stare at the unremarkable ground.

Why has he scrawled himself like graffiti across every place of Yuuri's?

But isn't that what you wanted—

 

 

 

Yuuko has cake, even though she wasn't expecting him so early. "Come on, it's your birthday! Of course you can eat cake."

The triplets dance around his feet, raucous, leaving him at constant risk of overbalancing. Yuuri is going to retire, but maybe that means he can be something for them.

"A little," he says, regretfully, because he'd like to eat a lot more. "I'm sure Viktor would like some."

"Where is he?" Yuuko asks.

"Ah—I'm not sure. I went out early."

"That's no good," Yuuko says. "I thought you two—"

"I mean—yes. We're—"

" _Boyfriends_ ," Axel says.

Yuuri turns his eyes up towards the ceiling while Yuuko orders the children to behave, and then, that failing, to go and annoy their father for a bit.

"He's still asleep," she says, with one of her little grins, hand to mouth, theoretically a bit like Viktor's but without the passive-aggressive edge, even when she's saying something like that. She's just amused. "That'll teach him to not get out of bed when he meant to."

Yuuri sighs and lets his body relax out of readiness for attack.

"You're worried," Yuuko says.

He shrugs. "I don't know. I'm thinking about retiring."

She studies him. "You mean you've decided."

"I—yes."

"And Viktor?"

"I haven't talked to him about it. It feels a bit too—I know we're together because of skating. And I don't want—I want to keep him as long as I can. I haven't talked to anyone else, either. It's only you."

"Oh, Yuuri," Yuuko says.

"Mm," Yuuri says.

"You think you're Cinderella," Yuuko says. "And your soulmark is going to turn into a _pumpkin_. Oh, that's so silly."

"Is it? It was always about skating."

She shrugs. "I don't know, Yuuri. You try to work something out, alright?"

It's a nice way of saying that he's being completely idiotic, and although he'll come to agree with that assessment, it's going to take another month or so.

The cake is very good.

 

 

 

"I've been thinking," Yuuri says, on the other side of a dozen small moments of celebration with friends, with family, with Viktor. "The exhibition skate. I—"

Viktor looks him over. "You don't want to use my routine any more? I don't know, Yuuri, it's short notice to change it around."

"I," Yuuri says. Resolve. Resolve comes more easily lately. "Thought we could make it a duet. Pair skating. I want to show people how far you've taken me." He flicks his gaze up to meet Viktor's squarely rather than letting Viktor's face be a peripheral thing. Needs to see.

"Oh—" Viktor says—

Swings Yuuri into a hug so suddenly that they nearly overbalance—a theme of Yuuri's day. Wouldn't that be a video for Youtube? _Internationally renowned figure skater Viktor Nikiforov and Some Japanese Man fall on their arses_. 

"Yes," Viktor says. His hand on the small of Yuuri's back again. It makes Yuuri breathless, as breathless as Viktor sounds. Makes him turn his face in against Viktor's neck. "I'd love that."

 

 

 

So Barcelona arrives—soon, too soon, not soon enough—anticipation and dread.

But it's a beautiful city, isn't it?

And he has Viktor. Right now, he has Viktor.

"You were so angry last time we went shopping," Yuuri says. "It was kind of scary."

Viktor laughs. "I'm surprised you volunteered for more."

"I thought—I haven't gone shopping properly in years. Not without someone dragging me around and being a complete—"

"Yuuri!"

Laughter shakes Yuuri too.

What a light little space they can make, in moments—amid the lights in the streets, the lights strung from trees. Shops and markets and sights.

Moments, yes. 

Yuuri hoards them.

In truth the ring is an impulse—some shade of Viktor's laughing declaration of engagement in there—some need, in the face of uncertainty—

No, he doesn't really think of it as engagement, not in the moment he buys the thing.

But Viktor's hand trembles when Yuuri slides the ring onto his finger.

But he radiates pride that even Yuuri can't brush off as a game when he returns the favour—

Oh, Yuuri thinks, looking at the gleam of gold on Viktor's finger.

Oh, Yuuri thinks, looking at the gleam of gold on his own.

The way their fingers quietly lace together without Yuuri having decided to allow it, his body just—seeking.

Well. Well then.

I'm in love with him, he told Makkachin, and it was true, a hook under his ribs, a piece of fear.

For a moment, a moment, a moment—it's warm and embracing instead.

"I couldn't get my mark outlined on short notice," Yuuri says, and Viktor is still trembling, still looking at him with that expression of—of—

Reverence. Maybe.

 

 

 

That reverence is even possible given the evidence of last year's banquet he's presented with later the same night seems completely improbable.

You think you're Cinderella, Yuuko said.

Oh _no_.

But—there it is. Here they are. Viktor walking back with Yuuri to the hotel, staying very close to him. Curling around him in one of the room's twin beds.

Lacing their fingers together again on Yuuri's stomach, gold and gold.

"Everyone knew we were soulmates," Yuuri says. Sighs. "And I pretended we weren't. I thought you didn't know."

Viktor snorts softly into Yuuri's hair. "I didn't know why you weren't talking about it. You never talk about things, Yuuri. I never thought you just didn't remember—"

 

 

 

So this is the thing:

Viktor turns to him. Curls gentle fingers around his. Kisses his ring. Is with Yuuri, on the ice—when Yuuri brings the ring to his lips—the same place Viktor's lips rested—

Yes. Viktor turns to him. But he also turns away. Out. Towards the world.

Yuuri, jealous of entirely theoretical other claims on Viktor, was so glad when Viktor didn't do that in China. That Viktor looked only at him. But now, when Viktor begins to open up again—well.

It only means he was right. To retire.

To send Viktor back to the world that can offer him more. Inspiration. Chances.

He must have needed Yuuri—but he's on his feet again, isn't he? Looking at the ice, wistful and excited.

And that's how, stumbling through explanation that night at the hotel, Yuuri learns:

Viktor can cry.

"We're soulmates because we needed each other for this year," Yuuri says. "You gave me so much, Viktor. And you got some space. But you have to compete. A soulmate can just be something you need for a moment, right? A turning point? Don't you think we've done that for each other now? It doesn't have to mean a place you just stay."

That Viktor's eyes can be so angry even as he keeps on crying those silent tears of his is a little shock, again—a piece of pain—a claw digging into his heart, slow and strong.

"Don't you think I should decide if I want to _just stay_ somewhere?" Viktor snaps. "Don't you think I know what I want? Do you think I want to compete if it isn't with you?"

Yuuri leans forward, tries to lay his hand to Viktor's cheek—Viktor shrugs away from him, chin lifted, defiant.

"I think I was so focused on the idea of soulmates that I missed out on a lot of other things," Yuuri says. He's no good at being gentle, but oh, he tries—to make his voice soft, to leave out any kind of accusation. "For a long time. I didn't even realise what the other things I had were. I wasn't lying about that. I never saw how important my family and my friends in Hasetsu were, even though they were giving so much to support me. I thought a soulmate was the only thing. You're the one who made me see it wasn't true."

Viktor says nothing—doesn't even make a noise. He holds himself unnervingly still, letting his tears run wherever they like. He doesn't even try to wipe them away.

"You can't make your life only about me," Yuuri says, pushing desperately back against every selfish urge, everything that he wants, wants, wants.

Keep Viktor like that, and there won't be a Viktor left.

"That doesn't mean you have to _retire_."

"I don't want to just slowly lose what I've gained. I think it's better just to stop—"

"Why?"

Because I wouldn't even have come this far if my coach wasn't you.

Because you're a terrible coach, but I need you. On the ice, I need you.

Off the ice, I need you too—but that's—

It doesn't always work out. That kind of thing can die a slow death too.

Yuuri, beyond words, can only shake his head.

 

 

 

Blank terrible days. To lie awake at night and wonder whether the person in the next bed is crying—Viktor cries so silently, how would he know? To wonder when you're allowed to touch or not, and how.

To know that the right thing is hurting everyone, in the moment.

He could have just stayed selfish. It would have been simpler.

In the moment.

Reach for Viktor and take it back. Let their bodies fall into sex at last like they've been wanting to for months. Hold him. Let him tangle himself up in a trap Yuuri knows too well.

Private practice, everything too brittle for the arena. 

"Why the ring?" Viktor asks, and he only sounds very tired, those lines on his face again, those dark circles. "If you're just going to leave?"

"Because you're my soulmate," Yuuri says, snaps, because of course he snaps, pushed too far by his own actions. "Because I love you."

Viktor turns sharply away.

 

 

 

One final night. They get room service, sit by the window.

"I showed off my soulmark," Viktor says, as though they haven't talked about this before, "because I thought it was completely irrelevant. I thought it didn't mean anything. I make my own life. I do it all alone. That's what I told myself. So it was _funny_."

"I see," Yuuri says.

"I never thought anything like this would happen," Viktor says. "I never thought I wanted anything like this to happen. I liked my strength. So I was showing off. I didn't know who my soulmate was, and I was going to be the best without it."

If he'd never thought like that, Yuuri would never have found him.

"I don't know what to do," Viktor says.

He's doing the airy thing—this whole conversation. The floaty voice—oh, I'm talking about something totally trivial, don't mind me.

He's not quite managing to get the energy right.

"You're really very cruel, Yuuri," he says. "What, no defense?"

No defense.

Viktor settles against him.

Yuuri, careful, making a conscious effort not to hold his breath, closes his arms around him.

 

 

 

This is the agreement: they make their own decisions.

This is the certainty with which Yuuri skates: it's the last time. It's his proof to Viktor—of love, of Viktor's heart, of everything Viktor's heart needs to thrive.

And here: 

Viktor sees it.

Relief, relief, relief, sweeping the loss along with it.

 

 

 

Yurio's anger is easier to deal with than Viktor's was. Funny—the fear really is completely gone. Yurio can snarl as much as he wants. Snarls. Drags Yuuri aside for the express purpose of snarling, flying off the ice in a rage, for all that he should be triumphant.

"What if I am retiring?" Yuuri asks. "Why do you mind?"

"Fuck," Yurio says. "You're so annoying."

Yuuri waits.

"You spend years being completely boring and then you're going to retire _now_?"

"I think so."

"Bullshit," Yurio says. "Bullshit!"

"You still haven't said why."

"I'm not going to say why. I'm just going to tell you you're an _idiot._."

"Yurio—"

"Pig."

"Yurio. Viktor is coming back. Isn't that what you wanted?"

Yurio stares at him.

He must know, mustn't he—? Viktor already told—and Yurio must have been there— 

"You're even more of an idiot than I thought," Yurio says.

"We need to go back," Yuuri says. "The medal ceremony."

"Fuck the medal ceremony too," Yurio says. "I'm going to break your record. You're not even going to try and defend it. Ugh. And you think I want Viktor back if he's going to spend the whole time staring sadly at a photo of you and kissing his ring? Gross."

But he goes. Storms out the way he stormed in.

And Yuuri wonders—he wonders.

Will not know, for a long time, that the answer is as simple as this: a perfect soulmark on Yurio's skin where there should be a fragmentary one, no other pieces needed to complete it. Yurio turns towards someone who might like him, might even support him, but whose world he will never transform. 

His life is turned upside down, and unless he tells Yuuri, Yuuri will never know why. Will never really understand that he himself did it, because no part of Yurio is written on his skin.

When they're retired, all of them, Yurio will tell the story—fortify himself for it with vodka—and years of sniping will resolve themselves into something cohesive.

The story will only be told once.

 

 

 

And here's the end of it. Yurio with gold and Yuuri with silver. Here's Viktor, with his shit-stirring smile, rejecting the silver.

Here they are, at last, at last, at last:

Agreeing to one more year.

It does feel, to Yuuri as well this time, like a marriage proposal.

It feels insane.

It feels perfect.

A soulmate can be so many things, and Yuuri, greedy after all, wants to have all of them.

Wants to give all of them to Viktor.

 

 

 

I'll have to tell Yuuko, Yuuri thinks, watching the more sedate dancing of this year's banquet, the squirming embarrassment of memory mitigated by Viktor's hand on his knee where they sit. It was some sort of really terrible Cinderella story after all. 

Just not the way I thought.

 

 

 

Yuuri is the one to turn frantic this time—the first one to turn frantic—drags the door to their hotel room closed so that the slam of it echos, grabs Viktor by the arm to push him against the wall—stretches up on his toes—gets a hand on the back of Viktor's neck. Pulls him down.

Viktor answers all in a rush, arms around Yuuri—his mouth is so hot against Yuuri's—uncoordinated and deep, messy, Yuuri's glasses in the way— 

They stumble to the bed, tumble, laughing—Viktor's cheeks are wet again, oh, oh, Viktor—

"I'm here," Yuuri says. "I'm here. I'm here."

"Not close enough," Viktor says—the first coherent words since they closed the door, the rest of it only moans and gasped words, incomprehensible.

Formal wear is difficult to get out of with shaking hands, with bodies that don't want distance between them.

And here—here—

Viktor and Yuuri have been naked together, playing at casual—the baths are a perfectly normal place to be naked, the fact of nudity there is completely unremarkable. Viktor's nudity always led Yuuri's mind down guilty paths anyway—and still, it's different now.

"To be clear," Viktor says, seemingly settled a little now that he's naked, "we _are_ going to have sex this time, right?"

He spreads himself out on the bed, pale on pale sheets so that the gold gleam of his ring is overwhelmingly striking, so very real.

His cock is half-hard between his legs. Fills a little just from Yuuri's scrutiny, Viktor shifting his body on the sheets either with one of those impulses of pleasure or with very deliberate calculation.

"Maybe if you're good," Yuuri says, and is caught by an immediate wave of mortification that is balanced out immediately by the wide-eyed look on Viktor's face—the heavy movement of his throat—the sound that pulls itself from his lungs.

Oh, Yuuri thinks, and files the information away.

But touch is all that he wants. All that he can get his head around. His hands on Viktor's shoulders, pinning him to the bed, as he grinds his cock against Viktor's—slowly, slowly, so that they both shudder at it—Viktor's mouth falls open, and he _whines_ —

"Yuuri," he says. "Yuuri—"

His cheeks glitter in the city light that spills in through the uncurtained window, the lamps still off, nobody collected enough to think of them. But now Yuuri does—think of them. Needs to see properly, see Viktor's face, be sure.

Yuuri fumbles for the bedside lamp, some little source of light, enough to pool warmly on Viktor's collarbones, to cast shadows on his face.

He's smiling.

He's crying. Not in the slight way from before, but hard, making a mess of his hair.

When Yuuri lifts a hand to Viktor's face, Viktor holds it there. His fingers are trembling. His mouth moves, as though he meant to say something and can't find the shape of it.

It's hardly anything, what they're doing—hardly anything at all. Yuuri has ground against people in the corner of a club—has in fact ground against people in a bed once or twice, mostly or completely naked—that's all this is.

He's unravelling. How often he feels like he's unravelling around Viktor, one way or another. And here Viktor is, unravelling with him. Too much stress, too long spent in uncertainty.

"Alright?" Yuuri murmurs, and Viktor nods, jerkily.

Yuuri remembers an afternoon spent kissing frantically, how much like being a teenager it felt—this feels that way too, on some level. The fumbling sense of being on the verge of something.

He sits back, looks down at Viktor. Looks at where Viktor's cock is pressed against his own, and feels arousal spike deep inside him at the sight, a feeling given a new edge by being made concrete. Spreads a hand on Viktor's chest, over the heart: open palm, splayed fingers.

Viktor closes his eyes, wet-lashed.

"Ah," he says, shifting under Yuuri, looking for friction—Yuuri refuses to move for him, holds his position, looking. "Ah—I always thought I'd want your cock inside me the first time."

He reaches between them to touch their cocks, both at once, his touch light and unsteady.

"You've been imagining me."

"Oh—only for a year."

Being coy isn't working for him any more than being flippant worked when they fought. 

Yuuri wants to ask—what Viktor thought he would be like. What Viktor wanted him to be. How Viktor felt, arriving in Hasetsu, and there just being—nothing.

He can't. He can't. Later, he will—touch Viktor and deny him by turns to push him through sharing the details, in a game more complicated than anything Yuuri has dreamt of doing in bed. It won't even be one of the most complicated things they eventually do.

But now, he only wonders—

"You want something else now," he says, a half-question.

"I want you to come back here and kiss me," Viktor says, working on whining in a less spontaneous way, more like the way he does when he's being deliberately annoying—but his body betrays him, again and again.

Yuuri did that. Does that. Is, right now, stripping Viktor back to something utterly, utterly human.

He comes back to Viktor.

He kisses him.

Takes Viktor's hand from between them and replaces it with his own—rubs his thumb in circles over the head of Viktor's cock, focuses in on the texture, the give—rubs back and forth over the slit and feels how damp Viktor is.

Kisses him. Again. Again.

The core of something else is here: the thrill in Yuuri when Viktor lies back and lets Yuuri touch him—the heat of pinning Viktor down again when he tries to reach for Yuuri—

But for the most part, there's only the feeling—so many kinds of relief—until they shake apart with it, their come spreading on Viktor's stomach. Something visceral. Something reassuring and terrifying.

 

 

 

They do it again the next morning. Turn each other over. Viktor kisses the small of Yuuri's back, methodical—traces every line with his fingers—drags his hands down over Yuuri's ass while Yuuri lets his hips roll restlessly against the sheets. Yuuri rubs his cock between Viktor's slicked legs and draws his fingers along Viktor's spine, the slight indentation of the mark, the lines beloved and familiar but never explored. He has spent years learning Viktor—he learns him from the beginning again now.

 

 

 

We're here, Yuuri thought in Hasetsu. They sit on the plane, now, back: not for long, but for a while. And then it'll be whatever it's going to be—Russia, and the world, and some place to make into a home. Temporary arrangements. Don't think about more permanent ones, not when the greater part of it is unknown. But places to exist together.

And we're still here. 

Despite everything— 

We're still here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends - it's been a ride. Thank you so much to everyone who's been commenting and leaving kudos - the response to this story has been pretty amazing to me, and I'm really grateful. 
> 
> If you like, you can check out the small playlist I used as music for writing this fic [here on spotify.](https://open.spotify.com/user/homsan.toft/playlist/6kQxQ0mZsFyuHpLt9jlLWo)


End file.
